


The In-Between Spaces (On The Path To You)

by MerlinScmerlin



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Eddie Diaz Speaks Spanish, Eddie Diaz-centric (9-1-1 TV), M/M, Not Beta Read, Ramon and Helena Diaz leave a lot to be desired, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerlinScmerlin/pseuds/MerlinScmerlin
Summary: Eddie was trapped in El Paso, going nowhere fast. On a whim, he decides to upend everything to live the life that he actually wants for himself and Christopher.Leading him, inevitably, to one Evan "Buck" Buckley.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 26
Kudos: 73





	1. IF THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first buddie fic. Be gentle! :D
> 
> Anticipated Update Schedule: Biweekly on Sundays

It was April 1st, a day for fools. Eddie certainly felt like one.

It was 6:00am on a Sunday morning. Eddie was on the tail end of a 12-hour shift at the independent EMT service, where he worked part-time. After having just finished a 10-hour shift at his warehouse job. A job secured through his brother-in-law, Juan, who was married to his older sister Sophia. 

Eddie didn’t even want to talk about his other part-time job. Working for his other brother-in-law, Julio, at his construction company. Eddie didn’t understand how his second sister, Ariana, could be married to such an asshole. Even if Eddie was grateful for the extra income it provided, it was not something worth dwelling on.

Eddie’s eyes were blurry from how tired he felt. Christopher had a fever a few nights ago, crankily keeping the both of them up. The medic was running on fumes. Had been running on fumes since Shannon left 28 months and 3 days ago.

Not that Eddie had been keeping track of how long she had been gone.

“Goddamit,” Eddie muttered under his breath in the back of when he realized he had zoned out and couldn’t remember the last number he had counted. Eddie shook his head, trying to chase the intrusive thoughts out of himself physically, and got back to taking stock of the supplies in the ambulance.

“What are you doing, Eddie?” Anita Mills, Eddie’s shift mate and former platoon mate from his Army days, called out loudly from across the building near the bathrooms. She was the reason Eddie had the job he did now.

“My job, Anita,” Eddie yelled back while rolling his eyes disdainfully. The first name still tasted weird in Eddie’s mouth. He was far more used to calling her ‘Mills’, even though they both left the army years ago. 

But calling each other by last name brought up memories they would rather let lie. So, first names were a necessity.

Not that Eddie felt he had much room to judge his younger colleague. She was fresh out of high school when they first met. Subtract the marijuana dependence and add dreams of becoming an amateaur MMA fighter, and she was basically living Eddie’s life from his late teens and early twenties. Which was a lifetime ago, it felt like.

“Maybe you should try it out,” Eddie followed up.

“Nah, I’m good,” Anita yelled as she walked from the bathrooms towards the couches located diagonal and only a dozen feet away from where the ambulances were parked. It was the unofficial break room area of the building. And home to the only comfortable seating in the entire complex. 

“Of course you are,” Eddie muttered under his breath, continuing his count of gauze types.

“George doesn’t like it when I do the inventory,” Anita’s voice was back to her normal level of volume. Which was still pretty loud, but more appropriate to the distance between them.

George was a balding, middle-aged, white man and manager of the band of EMTs. Not a bad dude but unfortunately not Eddie’s biggest fan. As much as George didn’t like Eddie, he _hated_ Anita.

“That’s because you messed it up on purpose,” Eddie said. Eddie could hear the faint sounds of a video start from off in Anita’s phone. Eddie couldn’t discern what it was, but it sounded sort of like an action film.

“True,” Anita said. Eddie could picture the nonchalant shrug that likely accompanied that response. “Why should I bother when Mr. Handsome-and-Perfect-Employee Eddie is on the job!”

Eddie had been an almost model employee over the last 12 months he had been working at the independent EMT services. More often than not they were doing Interfacility-Transports, hardly ever getting sent on any calls that could be considered exciting or a real emergency. If anything, with their experience as Combat Medics, Eddie and Anita were grossly over qualified for their positions.

Eddie tried not to let the bitterness of that thought linger.

“Fuck you!” Eddie forced himself to laugh back at the younger.

 _Damn, lost count again_. Eddie took in a deep breath through his nose and out through his mouth and started again. Eddie struggled on these kinds of days. He wanted to just keep his head down and get paid. 

“You have to take me out to dinner first, cowboy,” came Anita’s always-on-the-ready quips.

A strange moan punctuated the momentary silence that fell between them.

“Are you watching porn again?” Eddie yelled back in exasperation. The shuffling sound and muting of volume told Eddie everything he needed to know.

“No!” The response came back too quickly to be believed. “Some action flick.”

“Sure. I totally believe that,” Eddie’s tone did not match the words. 

“What was that?” The question had come from so much closer than before that Eddie jumped where he stood.

Anita had closed the distance to the ambulance and now had her head poking in through the open back door, grey-blue eyes inquisitive over her almost shoulder-length mop of brown hair. Eddie glanced over the woman quickly, noting the almost-fresh tattoo on her left forearm and the red tint to her eyes. 

“Are you high?” Eddie really tried to not sound like the judgmental 31 year old he was being. But since hitting the big three-oh around the time Shannon left them, he had stopped trying to seem cool and started to embrace his curmudgeonliness.

“You ask a lot of questions,” Anita shrugged, narrow shouldered and lanky. “And for your information, I’m getting a Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology.”

“How exactly does that answer my question?” Eddie inquired.

“Oh, Eddie. You poor, out of touch, boomer.” Eddie refused to let his eye twitch. “That obviously means two things. The first being, of course I’m high. I’m pretty much always high. That’s practically a requirement for IT people.”

Eddie chucked one of the recently accounted for packets of gauze at her face. Landing it dead between the forehead.

“Don’t call me a boomer,” Eddie laid down the law on that one. His parents were boomers. Eddie was only thirty-one. Solidly a millennial, thank you very much. Though he felt a million years old. Especially on days like that day, where his shoulder ached and the old scar tissue there felt stiff and uncomfortable. “You Gen Z trash.”

“Okay, hot stuff,” Anita said as she climbed into the back of the truck like a puppy unfamiliar with the expanse of its limbs. She moved to be instantly lounging on the bench on the opposite side of the truck from Eddie. “Let me educate you on some things.”

“Fuck, lost count again.” Eddie took another breath, and forced his mind to focus. 

“I’m obviously on the Millennial side of the Millennial/Gen Z divide,” Anita went off on one of her many long, disjointed, high tirades. 

Despite the general stoner irreverence, Anita’s rambling was very good for one thing. It was the perfect background noise. Eddie hardly heard any of the words coming out of the self-professed intellectual’s mouth. The ebb and flow of her words were exactly what he needed to finally focus. 

Anita joined Eddie’s platoon in the midst of Eddie’s second tour. Her chatter annoyed the shit out of him at first. Eventually, it was the sound he focused on during their many helicopter evacuations. Even more so, it was a voice that grounded him, even when they were holding bloody wounds closed under heavy fire.

After several long minutes, Eddie had finally finished logging the gauze and wound supply. 

“Fuck,” Eddie muttered under his breath. Now he needed to take stock of the drugs in the ambulance. Accounting for the drugs was his least favorite part. “Alright dude, gotta do the drugs. Come here and monitor my count so you can sign off on it.” 

The last thing he wanted to find was to not do this part exactly by the book. It wouldn’t be the first time he had caught mismanagement of drugs in his work career, and he needed the records to be spotless just in case.

 _Always cover your ass with good paperwork_ , his 68W instructor used to say.

“George is a dick. Always making you do this,” Anita said, as she rolled off her back from her lounging position on the ambulance bench. Stumbling into an upright position, and making her way to Eddie’s side.

Anita moved in so close, Eddie could smell the other’s sweat, weed, and day-old deodorant.

“George likes to punish me for changing my shifts around so much,” Eddie responded with a shrug. 

At the end of the day, even being a model employee while on the clock, George hated how flakey Eddie was. Eddie was constantly swapping or calling off shifts to make Christopher’s doctor’s appointments, occupational therapist appointments, parent teacher conferences, or anything else. Christopher always came first.

It's how Eddie almost always ended up with the worst shifts on nights and weekends, fighting sleep deprivation and boredom. While Christopher stayed at his parent’s place until Eddie could go pick him up.

“Well, rather be doing this with you than Overly-Medicated-Morris. Or Inappropriate-Touch-Thompson.” 

Anita bumped her slim shoulder into Eddie’s own. The simple contact sent goosebumps all up and down Eddie’s arm. It's the first time Eddie could remember somebody touching him outside of work or family.

Eddie refused to lean into it. 

“Thanks, Anita,” Eddie acknowledged. They did the review in companionable silence. Eddie calling out his count and marking on the checklist, Anita humming some unfamiliar song. 

When Eddie finally signed his name on the last box on the clipboard, he let out a sign of relief and passed the clipboard to his partner.

“Thank God that’s done,” Anita said as she began adding her signatures next to all the appropriate boxes. “And Medicated-Morris isn’t skimming off the top like I thought she was.”

“Wait.” Eddie scrunched his eyebrows down in a scowl he knew made him look particularly intimidating. “What do you call me behind my back?”

Anita Mills was entirely unphased.

“Hot-Damn-Diaz,” Anita smirked as she added an exaggerated flourish to the end of the last signature.

“Don’t you identify as a lesbian?” Eddie’s right eyebrow twitched.

“Doesn’t mean you’re not hot,” Anita waggled her eyebrows exaggeratedly at her long-time friend.

“You horn dog,” Eddie impulsively shoots out one gentle fist to knock against the other’s right arm. “Go jerk off in the bathroom again if you’re that desperate.”

“That was one time!” Anita’s voice cracked at the edges of the rushed defense.

“Yeah, Sarah will totally believe that the next time we grab beers,” Eddie teased back. Sarah was another former army buddy of theirs, a buddy that was five months deep in her third pregnancy. 

Eddie cringed at remembering that he hadn’t responded to Sarah’s text in a few days. Her toddler was two, old enough now that maybe Eddie could have them over for dinner. Eddie could make tacos. Or order in pizza. Which was basically the limit of his culinary expertise.

He made a mental note to himself to follow-up, and hoped that it stuck in his brain that time. 

“You will tell my almost-sister no such thing!” Anita’s voice went high on a squeak. “Plus, I’ve been in the middle of a dry spell.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen you in a wet spell,” Eddie continued the good natured banter. The ribbing was a staple of their working relationship.

In his sadder moments, it made Eddie think of his former platoon. The camaraderie there was the best part of the Army, even as those memories were also some of his worst. 

Eddie ignored how lonely that thought made him feel, ignored how much he missed having someone to have his back. How he didn’t have that anymore, and it was his own damn fault for it.

“I’ll show you wet, old man,” Anita responded by rote, voice dropping low in the pantomime of seduction. Even though Eddie found her exasperating sometimes, she was fun and funny. “Just gotta let me work my magic.”

Eddie let himself laugh as Anita added thrusting motions to emphasize the point. Anita snorted at her own antics, devolving into uncontrolled giggles. Every few minutes the giggling would subside, only to bubble back up again as Anita did her weird pelvic motion.

They were still laughing when the 7:00am relief crew came in for their shift.

“Fuck yes,” Anita practically skipped past the relief crew on the way to the locker room with Eddie. “24-hour shifts are the worst!”

“Only a 12-hour for me and I’m already over it,” Eddie responded back. 

“Did I ever tell you that beard makes you look like Khal Drogo?” Anita taunted, bumping into and away from Eddie with every few steps.

Eddie, fed up, gave her one hard shove to push her off balance. Like the awkward fawn that she was, she stumbled and righted herself just as quickly.

“Maybe I should shave it?” Eddie responded. Eddie self consciously reached up to run the back of his hand along the scratch of his jaw. He really had been letting himself go in that department. “I want a shower and a nap more, though.”

Eddie _really_ needed a shower and a coffee if he was going to make it through Sunday Mass with the family and still have the energy to stay awake with Christopher. Then he remembered the cramped and perpetually moldy shower room they had in the back, and changed his mind.

“Everything looks good on you, dude. Lucky bastard,” Anita said, shucking off her work shirt and slacks unselfconsciously. Revealing a lithe body almost completely covered in tattoos. Each patch a different style, almost. Left arm mostly one-off pieces blended to look like a seamless whole. Right ankle to calf completely black, before fading into crow and bird patterns up the thigh. Chaotic and deliberate.

Eddie forced his eyes away.

The agency had a female locker room. With only two female EMTs on staff at that moment, it was hardly ever used and, therefore, management never organized proper cleaning schedules for it. So it was significantly grosser than the men’s locker room. 

Most didn’t even bother to use the gritty women's locker rooms. Anita, the irreverent goofball that she was, just used the men’s ones when she was on shift with Eddie or went home and changed.

“Do you need a ride?” Eddie forced himself to ask casually. He shook his head and forced himself to focus.

“Dude, yes!” Anita made a fist bump motion into the air. “My car is in the shop again and Sarah will kill me if I ask for another ride.”

“Alright, hurry up then.” Eddie turned his back to the younger woman, and changed quickly and in silence.

\--

The morning sun filled the inside of Eddie’s Toyota, forcing Eddie to squint at the horizon as he made his way through the expanse of El Paso. He really should keep a pair of sunglasses in his truck.

The laughter that was present between them seemed to have dried up in the morning light. Eddie’s limbs felt heavy, eyes rough.

“You okay, dude?” Came the soft question from his companion in the passenger seat.

“I,” Eddie’s mouth opened and shut again. He repeated the motion several more times, struggling to find the words.

“Take your time, man.” Anita was using her emergency-situation voice. Voice-even, direction’s clear. Not pressuring, just confirming its presence. Eddie had been on the receiving side of it many times.

“I keep fucking it up, you know?” Eddie was glad for the distraction of driving. He didn’t think he could bear to look his best friend in the eyes.

Couldn’t bear to find the pity that he was sure was lurking there.

“What do you mean, fucking up?” Anita asked, body languid in the seat next to him from what Eddie could tell from the corner of his eyes.

“Everything,” Eddie replied, grave but certain in the pronouncement.

“You’re amazing at a lot of things, Edmundo Diaz,” Anita reached between the space between them and flicked him on the ear repeatedly. “So I’m going to need you to be a little bit more specific than that.”

Eddie used his right hand to shoo away her hand, before focusing once more on driving. Not that there were many cars on the road at those times.

Eddie’s mouth went dry, didn’t know where all of his words had disappeared to. The silence uncomfortable, but 

“Well, if you refused to elaborate on that, I’ll start taking some guesses.” Anita had known Eddie for years, and knew how he got when he had too much time to stew in his own head. “Since this is Edmundo Alejandro Diaz we’re talking about it can only be a few things: Christopher, Your Parents, Shannon, or some combination of the three.”

The words hit Eddie somewhere in the solar plexus. Both because of how true it was and how predictable he was.

“We went to the same therapist after Shannon fled, dude. I know you. So you think about that and I’ll wait,” Anita declared before reaching over the car radio to start flipping through stations until she found something she liked.

Typical Anita, she changed the station every thirty seconds or so and never really settled anywhere.

Eddie ignored Anita while he gathered his thoughts.

“All three of them.” Eddie’s fists tightened on the steering wheel. “I keep trying and trying and trying and trying. But where does that end up?”

“Eddie,” Anita said but quickly halted. Something about the tone, though, forced Anita to reach over and turn off the radio from the morning talk show that she had landed on. She turned her body in her chair to the limit the seatbelt allowed and watched Eddie intently.

“When Shannon got pregnant her senior year of college, I was 23. I had an AA in Bio from EPCC that my parents forced me to get. I was working in a warehouse part-time while trying to make it as an MMA-fighter.” There was almost nothing Eddie regretted more than being grossly underprepared to be a real adult. Comically underprepared to be real husband to a partner, and tragically underprepared to be a real father to a child. 

He regretted how much time he wasted chasing meaningless dreams.

“I didn’t have a steady income, no health insurance, I was living with my parents. Both her and my parents pretty much thought I was destined to be a deadbeat dad,” Eddie said as he turned on the signal light to exit the freeway and start making his way through regular streets to Anita’s home.

Only able to navigate so easily, while his throat felt like it was rebelling against the rest of his body, because he was so familiar with the route.

“My dad drove me to the Army Registration Center and I signed up. No questions. I had a solution. It was the least I could do for Shannon. And it got my parents off my back.”

Eddie ignored the soft hand on his shoulder and the sting in his eyes. The Army was something that Eddie couldn’t regret, even if it was painful.

“Shannon hated that I never talked to her about it,” Eddie confessed. “Even when I reenlisted again without talking to her.”

“Eddie, we all fuck up,” Anita tried to reassure him but knew Eddie wasn’t really hearing her.

They were in front of Anita’s apartment complex. Eddie doesn’t remember the time between exiting the freeway and arriving. He moved the car into park and killed the engine.

“I was doing the right thing, stepping up and being a man.” Eddie hesitated, knowing the words struck hollow in his chest. “I _thought_ I was doing the right thing.”

“But here I am,” Eddie waved around in his shitty old truck. Christopher’s toys littering the back seat, upholstery ripped in places and AC weak and on it’s last leg. He couldn’t afford a better truck. “Thirty-one, wife gone, working three part-time jobs, and going nowhere in life.”

The right jab to his shoulder came so quickly, Eddie almost didn’t feel the pain of it right away.

“What the fuck, Anita!” Eddie exclaimed while moving to rub his now dead-arm.

“You quiet that pretty mouth of yours, Eddie,” Anita’s eyes blazed under her long bangs. “Not all of that is your fault. Take the blame that is yours but don’t pretend that it’s all on you.”

“Dude, you know you have bony knuckles. That hurt!” Eddie found himself reluctantly laughing at the audacity.

“Don’t be a wimp Eddie, I’ve punched you harder.” Anita laughed at him mockingly, daring Eddie to reciprocate. 

Eddie did, viciously. Though he was almost certain he hurt his own fist against her bony shoulder more than he hurt her. The woman had broken four ribs and an arm after their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, and she was laughing at him within minutes of waking up. Her pain tolerance was prodigious.

The laughter was back again, and the dark gloom that had settled over Eddie’s eyebrows had slowly lessened though didn't evaporate completely.

“I’m going to throw some of your own words back at you right now, you hypocrite.” Anita dropped her normal voice to a poor imitation of Eddie’s. “You deserve good things. You deserve to do things for yourself that make you happy.”

Eddie vaguely remembered telling Anita something like that a few years ago, “Was that after your break-up with Liliana?” 

“Lets ignore that dumpster fire of a night and get back to the point,” Anita groaned. It was best not to think about how wasted and poorly she had handled that, with Eddie consoling her with those words in the midst of puking her guts out of his truck window. “It was hearing that from you that I decided to finally go back to school.”

Eddie threw inquisitive eyebrows back at Anita. He had never heard this before. 

“Eddie,” Anita had taken on her rare serious voice once again. “You know what it's like for veterans when they get back. The struggle, the alcohol, the lack of direction. You helped remind me I can have a life. That I can do something with myself.”

“I don’t know how that’s supposed to help me right now, Anita.” Eddie responded. 

“You’ve gone through hell, man,” Anita replied seriously. “And you’re still going through it. You need a goal, something to work towards, or you’re just going to keep being stuck.”

“Not that I’m not grateful but I have a son. It doesn’t work like that for me,” Eddie responded, not defeatedly but resigned.

“Fuck!” Eddie exclaimed, when Anita punched him again. And continued to punch him, until Eddie caught her fists in his hands and restrained them. “Stop! You hit hard!” 

“Would you say that shit to Sarah or your sisters?” Anita asked, glaring daggers at her friend. “So don’t pull that shit with me _Edmundo_.”She spat his legal name out like a curse.

“Okay, okay! I give up, you’re right,” Eddie placated her as he released her fists from his grip. “But what would I even do?”

“What do you like to do?” Anita feinted another punch at Eddie just to watch him flinch. She smiled wicked sharp at her buddy when he did flinch, and then waited for him to respond as he contemplated the question. “Now, turn the car back on so we can get some AC and some tunes. I know you’re going to stew here forever while you think. I might as well stick around until you’re ready to talk, otherwise you’re just going to be calling me while I’m in the middle of a nap or something.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, so Eddie simply compiled. He took note of the digital clock on his dashboard, and let out a sigh of relief that he still had plenty of time before he needed to go pick up Christopher from his parents.

Eddie let his head hit the back of the headrest, noting how bumpy and stiff the thing felt against his neck. Paid vague attention as Anita looked to be swiping through tinder profiles while he contemplated his life.

 _What did Eddie Diaz like?_ Wasn’t that a loaded question.

“Hey, lets go to McDonalds. My treat,” Anita said eyes focused on her phone. Eddie shifted the car to drive without a word of acknowledgement, and drove them around the block to the McDonalds near her place.

Minutes later, they were sipping their over-sweetened, over-creamed coffees and devouring their egg McMuffins in the parking lot.

“I like helping people. Having a team. In the army,” Eddie spoke the words slowly. Sounding them out practically vowel by vowel.

Anita latched on like a woman on a mission.

“Doctor?” Anita responded instantly, still staring intently at her phone screen as she typed out a message to a girl with more piercings then flesh on one of her dating apps. 

“I hated college,” Eddie shrugged, falling easily into the conversation once more. “Plus, it would take forever. I’d miss out on a lot of time with Christopher.”

“You have an AA. There’s other ways to help people without a lot more school,” Anita shrugged back at him. “Police officer?”

Eddie shook his head. He had far too few good experiences with law enforcement to think that was anything other than a terrible life choice. 

“Occupational Therapist?” Anita asked. Eddie shrugged noncommittally. He had known quite a few, since Chris had several that he had worked with for mobility and general health.

Anita rattled off several more options, drawing from a list she found on google. Many of them were an instant bust.

“Firefighter?” Anita rattled off the next one on the list. 

Eddie hesitated.

“Firefighter Diaz,” Eddie tested it out. 

Eddie let himself imagine it for a brief second. The uniform, the work, the purpose. Remembered, faintly, long summer days in their yard with his older sisters while they took turns playing Firefighter. Saving imaginary cats from trees, and carrying siblings around over shoulders laughing as they ran from imaginary blazes. 

“Has a ring to it,” Anita reassured him as she crumpled up her sandwich wrapper and stuffed it into her now empty cup of coffee. Her voice crashed him out of his thoughts and reality set in.

Firefighters had dangerous jobs with insane hours. 

“No go,” Eddie responded, shoulders slumping minutely. “It’d be too hard to make work since I have Christopher.”

“Dude, don’t you think it would be a good example for your son to work hard for something worthwhile even if it's tough? Rather than doing the easy thing that you hate?” Anita asked. 

Eddie shifted his gaze from the horizon through his front-window screen and turned to look Anita directly in the eyes.

“That's,” Eddie’s forehead creased down. “That’s a surprisingly good point.”

“I have a lot of those,” Anita’s crooked smile showed no offense at Eddie’s words. 

“No, seriously Anita,” Eddie’s eyebrows were tense under the thoughtful look he was wearing. “I never thought of that.”

“You know how hard it was to convince Sarah to go for therapy for her PTSD,” Anita explained. Eddie was very aware of how that went down with their other friend. To call it a battle would have been an understatement. “I used basically the same argument but instead of your adorable 6 year old, I used my 2 year old god-child as emotional blackmail. Best way to strong arm the two of you to do something good for yourselves is to use your children against you.”

Eddie squinted at her in outrage that was only half feigned. Though, he didn’t put up any real protest because he knew she was right.

“Why are you going into IT instead of some mental health thing?” Eddie asked, honestly curious. “You seem to get this stuff so easily.”

“I briefly considered the idea of a social work program or something,” Anita admitted. “But I would have to give up weed during work hours. So I decided against it.”

The laughter that escaped from Eddie came straight from his belly, up his throat, and filled the interior of the truck. Eddie turned the truck back on, still laughing, and maneuvered the two of them back to Anita’s place to drop her off.

As Anita left the car and made her way to the apartment entrance, a thought struck him.

“Hey Anita?” Eddie called out for her after rolling down his truck window. Anita turned back at him inquiringly. “You said there were two things that going in IT meant. The first being you’d always be high. What’s the second one?”

Anita laughed as she threw open her apartment doors with a laugh, and looked at Eddie with mirth dancing a rhumba in her eyes.

“That even though I’ll be making good money, I’ll still be single and horny as fuck!”

Eddie smiled at her, shaking his head. 

“Think about what we talked about, Eddie,” Anita said, body half inside the entrance of the building. Shooting finger guns at him in jest, “Or should I say, Firefighter Diaz?”

Eddie sat in the morning for a few seconds longer. His parents were on the opposite side of town, so he plugged in their address into Waze so he could use the app to get reminders about the speeding cameras and get notifications about any possible police situated on the way back.

“Firefighter Diaz,” he mumbled to himself in the quiet of his car.

It really did have a ring to it.


	2. WHAT LIES ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie leaves El Paso for L.A.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After learning more about Eddie and his parents in "Eddie Begins", they left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I do think they are probably, at their core, good parents. But the way they babied Christopher and other evidence, suggests to me that they come with some holier-than-thou/judgmentalness. 
> 
> Mostly, though, a lot of this is just the realization of a lot of my headcannons regarding the Diaz Family situation :D
> 
> Note: Any mistakes in Spanish are entirely my own! English was the main language in my fam, even though my parents spoke Spanish too, so I'm crap at writing. Feel free to point out mistakes/let me know what I did wrong, and I hope it doesn't detract from the experience! :D
> 
> Many thanks to [Angh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angh/pseuds/Angh) with assistance with cleaning up the Spanish.

Eddie had been to Los Angeles more times than he could count. Some of Eddie’s earliest memories were of his little family (little in comparison to the most of the Diaz clan) going on a trip to LA to see abuela. Most of the time, the journey was in the family SUV, with Eddie in the back row by himself while his two sisters hogged the middle row. 

Eddie had flown there on planes a handful of times. Had twice gone there on a Greyhound by himself as a teen. Once even left and returned to LA on a boat. That was when Ramon and Helena Diaz had the bright idea of taking the family on a Hawaiian Cruise for one last hurrah before Eddie’s oldest sister, Sophia graduated high school and went off to greener pastures. Ariana spent the entire trip puking her guts out no matter how much Dramamine she took and Eddie was forced to take care of her until they were finally back on solid ground.

Suffice it to say, they never did that again.

The journey to LA felt familiar in the way his Abuela’s house felt familiar. A thing he knew intimately while simultaneously not being able to tell you where to find anything if you asked him about it. (Except where the bathroom was located, and where abuela kept her best snacks hidden.) 

However, Eddie was experiencing a first when it came to traveling to LA. Eddie was driving there, not in his parent’s SUV as a passenger, but as the driver in his own beaten down Toyota Tacoma. The comfortable familiarity of the trip was nowhere to be found and instead Eddie’s belly was filled with a swirling mix of uncertainty and determination. 

Eddie’s hands were firm around the distorted, beaten up steering wheel, as he focused in the sepia gloom of a freeway in the dark. The sun had set hours ago and Chris was passed out in his car seat in the back. One small line of droll rolling off the side of the small boy’s mouth, where his head hung limp over one shoulder. Chris’ curls had become a riot since Eddie had styled it that morning in some podunk Arizona hotel they had lodged in for an evening. The angel of a boy was going to have a terrible crick in his neck when Eddie finally woke him from slumber.

They had run late on Thursday morning, delayed with last minute packing and another fight between Eddie and his parents. The last fight one was the worst so far.

His fists tightened on the steering column hard enough to make the thing creek. Eddie forced himself to stop thinking about his parents and focus instead on driving in the California evening as the car’s digital clock marked the arrival and departure of midnight. 

_It’s Saturday,_ he contemplated in the quiet of his mind. Eddie had turned off the radio station hours ago. Something about it lured his eyes down closed more firmly than silence. _But is it still Friday night or was it officially Saturday morning?_

The man shook his head and forced the thoughts out of his mind, concentrating on following Google Maps' insistent instructions to exit the I-10.

Eddie probably should have stopped for another night. Should have let himself and his son rest, recuperate, and make their way to Abuela’s house in East LA during daylight hours. Especially since LAFD Training started promptly on Monday morning.

Since the moment he received his acceptance into the LAFD program at the end of April, there had been an itch that built under his tanned skin. Some thick feeling, that poked at his joints and bubbled in his gut. Impatience and excitement. A series of sensations that Eddie hadn't felt in entirely too long

~-~

_“Hola, abuela,” Eddie responded to the phone call he received out of the blue from his father’s mother, Isabel. He was in the midst of folding his and Chris’s laundry. “¿Por qué me estás llamando?” 1_

_“Eddie, mi ángel.” Eddie always knew he was a little bit Abuela’s favorite. Something that was a point of contention between Eddie and his sisters. If you asked her who her favorites were, Isabel would say she loved all of her children, grandchildren, and her few great-grandchildren. Her tone so heavy with sass, you would never realize she never said anything about loving them equally. “¿No tienes tiempo para hablar?” 2_

_“Of course I do, abuela.” In moments like these, Eddie could say definitively that Abuela was his favorite too. Plus, she made an amazing champurrado. “Sorry. Hi! How are you? Lovely to hear from you!”_

_Isabel’s chuckle showed no irritation at the cheek of her grandson, only delight. Eddie would swear before God that Christopher got his sense of humor and half his personality directly from Isabel. Even if they had met only a handful of times._

_“Mi intuición me dijo que debía llamarte.” 3 Isabel was a bit of a self-proclaimed psychic. Even if you didn’t believe in that stuff, it was still always best to humor Abuela. _

_"I'm all good," Eddie promised as he readjusted the cell phone, holding it against his cheek with just his shoulder. The acceptance emails, first one from LA and second one from Chicago, were sitting in his email inbox, arriving within hours of each other the day before. The rejections from Houston and Phoenix sat in his inbox as well, arriving that morning. "Tell me all the new gossip in LA."_

_"Hmmm," Isabel hummed in obvious disbelief at her grandson's deflection. "¿Recurdas a tu prima Rosalina?" 4_

_"¿La hija de Tío Felipe?" 5 Eddie asked as he continued to silently fold Chris’s tiny shirts into one neat pile, while giving his shirts a much more haphazard approach in comparison. Eddie switched the phone off his shoulder, setting it to speaker mode and placing it down on the bed next to him. _

_Being closer to 80 than to 70, the older woman was content to enjoy the sound of her grandson breathing and the slow rustling of him doing chores, while she rattled off on her Rosalina's good news while also lamenting her still unmarried state despite now getting pregnant for a second time with the same guy._

_Eddie was distracted, both by folding his laundry and, impulsively, going to his email app every few seconds to refresh the inbox. While_ _LA was his top choice, Eddie was trying to be a rational adult about this. Make a fully informed decision. The next training cohort started in Mid-May. Two whole weeks before Christopher was supposed to finish the first grade. Chicago was probably a better choice, not starting until early July._

_He needed to make a choice. Soon._

_Eddie didn't even notice that the line between them had lapsed into silence in his distraction._

_“Tu madre estaba llena de odio por tu abuelo cuando estaba embarazada de ti,” 6 Isabel told Eddie after the silence had continued to fill the line. This wasn’t the first time Isabel had claimed, rightly, that Helena was not much of a fan of the original Edmundo Diaz even despite agreeing to letting her only son take up the name. _

_Eddie snorted on the line, “Be nice, abuela.”_

_“Es la razón por la que eres como eres, Eddito,” Izabel responded delightedly. “Tranquilo, sensible y sensato; un hombre de acción más que palabras.” 7 _

_Eddie tapped at his phone until his email inbox closed, continuing his chores, interjecting with occasional hums and exclamations at Isabel Diaz's comparison's between Eddie and his late grandfather. Eddie would not win in trying to dissuade her from the superstition that whoever you hate the most while pregnant was the person your child would take after. If that was the case, who did Shannon hate to make Christopher as amazing as he was?_

_Instead, Eddie had something much more important he wanted to talk to abuela about._

_“What would you think if maybe,” Eddie said out of the blue. Abuela immediately went silent. Eddie swallowed around the lump in his throat, voice was rough with the weight of the words. “What would you think if Chris and I moved to LA?”_

_Though her grandson couldn't see it, he could sense that Isabel’s face lit up like a sea of fireworks against a night sky._

_“I would say there is always a place for you in my home, mi ángel.” While Isabel’s English wasn’t nearly as good as Eddie’s Spanish, it was far more beautiful if you were to ask the young man._

_Eddie had made his decision._

_~-~_

Less than twenty-four hours after that phone call, Eddie finally let his parent’s know that he was applying to fire departments around the country. Eddie didn’t need to ask his parents about their opinions on where he should go or what he should do about Christopher. He already knew what those opinions would be.

They needed to fight it out about Eddie and Christopher moving at all. Let them vent some vitriol, before he let them know that moving to LA meant moving in the next two weeks. And that Christopher wouldn’t finish first grade in El Paso.

Eddie was not even contemplating trying to get his parent’s on board. This was a war of attrition, Eddie knew, and he was setting out to wear his enemies down so he could make a clean escape.

The first of many fights was more vicious than Eddie had anticipated though. 

~-~

_“Don’t drag him down with you Eddie.”_

_Eddie marveled at Helena in these moments. How soft her eyes looked, how beautiful her face, as she grabbed at the tenderest parts of his psyche and ripped them to shreds. He had seen her do this to Ariana when she announced her engagement to Julio. Saw the way Sophia flinched when she announced she was switching from pre-med track to mathematics._

_Eddie had been waiting for these words. Maybe surprised by their particulars, but not surprised that something like this was lurking between them._

_In his darker moments, Eddie wondered if he would finally snap. Would he throw up? Start screaming or crying?_

_Eddie was surprised and a little bit proud of himself. The words struck, somewhere in the hollow of his spine, but the pain bleeding out from his chest was a shallow drip rather than the gushing wound he had expected._

_When Eddie stood, he noted the two of them subtly twitched. As if they were afraid of an outburst from him. They had been waiting for him to go off the deep end since he got back from the war. Not that he ever had, especially not in front of them. You don’t expose a vulnerable belly to predators._

_Eddie kept his cool and walked away to go outside and catch his breath._

_Finding his son outside practically waiting for him. That was a sign for Eddie, the way Abuela’s phone call was._

_“I miss you all the time,” the boy’s response was so quiet and so melancholy. Instead of hurting, the response filled Eddie with warmth. He missed Chris all the time too._

_It meant only one thing. That keeping Eddie with Christopher, and Christopher with Eddie, was the only correct answer there could be._

_“I’m keeping my son_ _with me and we’re moving to LA,” were the words on Eddie’s lips when he walked back into the house. In for a penny, in for a pound. “And we’ll need to move in the next two weeks.”_

_Eddie didn’t hear any of the words that followed. His mind was made up. All that was left were the details._

_~-~_

They were lucky Eddie had decided to tell them at all, the soon-to-be-firefighter thought in the quiet of his truck interior. There only company he had in the dark were his own thoughts, and a blue Honda Civic that had been trailing behind him since the Arizona-California border.

In the weeks leading up to the big move, in the quiet of his bed as he tried to fall asleep, Eddie would daydream fleeing in the night without any notice or explanation to his parents. Taking satisfaction in their imagined look of indignation and worry.

As much as he wanted to, though, it wasn’t in Eddie to deliberately hurt his family like that.

The one benefit of putting everything out in the open was that Eddie could now openly court his sister’s to his side. A side they had taken up gleefully. Running interference and working behind the scenes to help Eddie get to LA and to Abuela’s. Eddie had already secured a promise from Sophia to bring Juan and the kids for New Years. Hopefully, he could get Ariana to come without Julio.

Though neither of his sisters could prevent the final blow out. Thinking about it, something sharp-edged grew in Eddie. He was entirely uncertain if the relationship between him and his parents would ever recover.

He wasn’t even sure if he cared.

~-~

_“Eddito, stop ignoring me.” Ramon hissed out between gritted teeth, as he stood with Eddie behind the open U-Haul trailer and loaded in the last of the boxes. Sophia and Ariana were busy with getting their kids to school, and Eddie’s parents were the only ones available to help Eddie load the last of his place into the U-Haul._

_“I’m not ignoring you dad, I’m not sure what you want me to say. We’ve been over this already,” Eddie sighed in defeat._

_“What are you thinking, mijo?” Trying to keep his voice as low as possible to avoid Chris from overhearing from the back seat of the rental car. Eddie had strapped him in minutes ago, hoping to keep the little boy away from the brewing drama. Plus, neither Helena nor Eddie would put up with Ramon yelling in front of Chris like that. “Not letting Christopher finish first grade. You’re making a mistake.”_

_“Ramon,” Helena, voice rolling the ‘r’ and lifting up on the ‘a’ in a Spanish accent, which was the real way to know if Helena was actually furious with her husband. When she was not actually angry, she said it the way the white grocery clerk would say it. Soft and flat._

_Helena came up behind the pair with the final box, thwacked her husband on the arm perfunctory with one hand, before setting the box in the trailer. “You’re not helping.”_

_“What? I’m helping.” Ramon responded, exasperation weighing his voice. Ramon grabbed the box his wife had just set down, and moved it into a more secure position in the truck. “See?” Ramon gestured at the box. Neither son nor wife were amused. The older Latino continued on, “I’m not trying to convince him not to go. I promised I’d stop that.”_

_“Thanks, Apá,” Eddie drawled sarcastically, grabbing the box his dad had just moved, and putting it in a better position. That column of boxes was already wobbly enough. “Can really feel the support on that one.”_

_“You know what I mean, Eddito.” Eddie had to force himself not to scrunch his face at the pet name._

_“And you know I’ve already worked it out with Ms. Hernandez and the school,” Eddie responded back in equal exasperation._

_“Edmundo,” Helena started and paused. Eddie tensed, knowing it was about to start getting ugly. Just like with Eddie’s father, Helena only went full or properly accented name when she was about to pull out the big guns._

_While Swedish, Helena was also Catholic. Having met Eddie’s father at mass of all places. As much as mass was tradition to a Catholic, Helena’s mother was equally versed in another Catholic cultural institution: the guilt trip. She wielded it expertly and let the silence lay between them until Eddie couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes._

_Eddie stared at her temple instead, figuring that was good enough. He noted the patch of grey at her roots. She hadn’t gone to the salon in a while to get it touched up. Something that only happened when his mother was feeling particularly stressed or anxious. The same look had lived on Helena’s face when Eddie had returned from Afghanistan the final time. Eddie had still been bruised and healing from the skirmish that ended his army career and earned him a silver star, when he had last seen her grey roots that clearly._

_Eddie’s mother hadn’t even opened her mouth and he was already feeling guilty._

_“Amá,” Eddie acknowledged. Tongue heavy in his mouth. “Please don’t.”_

_“Don’t what, Edumundo?” Helena’s eyes were as beautiful as they were fierce. “Worry about you? Worry that you’re rushing into things? That you’re not thinking things through?”_

_Eddie reached out to settle gentle hands on her tense shoulders. She brushed him off, refusing to be placated._

_“I worry that maybe you like the danger. Maybe you miss it from the army and that’s why you’re rushing off to become a firefighter of all things?” The words started out slowly, but by the end were being ejected from her mouth at great speed._

_“Mom,” Eddie reached for her again, more insistently that time. He couldn’t not. They drove him crazy but he loved them._

_They loved him too. He knew that intellectually. Though he struggled to remember that past the rage, embarrassment or annoyance they were prone to provoking in their only and youngest son._

_Eddie embraced her in a full body hug. She was so small now in his arms. Eddie could almost imagine he could feel her tears soak his shoulder. Though he knew Helena would never dare shed a tear. They were in public and there was a child in the back seat of the truck waiting for them to wrap up. It wouldn’t be appropriate._

_Helena cared a lot about what was ‘appropriate.’_

_“I know this doesn’t make sense to you,” Eddie turned his gaze from the top of his mother’s head, looking at his father. Noting how his beard was more white than black nowadays. “To either of you. But the LAFD pays well. There are good benefits, good schools, and we’ll have plenty of family around. It's everything Chris and I need right now.”_

_The fact that it was only a short drive from Yorba Linda, where Shannon and her parents resided, was left entirely unacknowledged between the three of them. A dagger his parents, thankfully, did not plunge into his back._

_More for Christopher’s sake than for his own, Eddie was sure._

_“There are other jobs, mijo,” Ramon responded. The tone was almost reassuring. Would have succeeded if Ramon had ever had anything favorable to say about any of Eddie's jobs except the Army. Always finding fault that Eddie didn’t have a good full-time job, even as Eddie only worked three part-time ones because it gave him the flexibility to be there for Christopher and still put food on the table. “And family right here.”_

_“You’re still not listening.” Eddie was tired of repeating this dance, over and over and over again. Eddie remembered some story he read once in high school. About some Greek dude named Sisyphus with a boulder. At that moment, Eddie was jealous of Sisyphus. At least a boulder couldn’t jab you where it hurt. “I was a medic. I helped people. It's the only thing I’ve ever been good at. This is what I want to do.”_

_“But Chris needs stability,” Helena murmured into his shoulder. There it was. Eddie had been waiting for the poisoned fangs to drop. “We can give him that.”_

_Under that he heard the implicit ‘and you can’t.’_

_“Just let him stay with us until you’re done with the academy. Your father and I have always been there for him,” Helena said._

_‘Not like you or Shannon,’ Helena meant._

_Eddie released her before she had a chance to continue dropping those oh-so-reasonable statements. Unwrapping his arms from around her slowly, his body stiff as granite._

_“Been there for him unlike his_ **_pendeja_ ** _of a mother, you mean?” Eddie’s shoulders were hunched up so high, his ears practically kissed his shoulders._

_“Don’t take that tone with your mother, young man,” Ramon was no longer content to stand on the sidelines. Not that he ever held his opinions back for very long._

_“I’m not trying to take a tone, I’m tired of you both trying to steamroll me.” Eddie raised his voice to talk over them, as they rushed to deny._

_“We do not,” Ramon started._

_“Son, of course," Helena began at the same time._

_“You are doing it right now!” Eddie finally lost control of his carefully reined in anger. His voice didn’t raise more than a few decibels but the intent was clear._

_Ramon stepped closer into Eddie’s space._

_Looking into his dad's eyes, it was the first time Eddie consciously realized he didn’t need to physically look up to make eye-contact. It was the first time Eddie realized he had dozens of pounds of muscle on his father. Eddie wasn’t used to the realization that his father’s intimidating presence lived more strongly in Eddie’s mind than in actual reality._

_“You guys are the ones who insist on insulting Shannon,” Eddie can taste bile at the back of his tongue. “In front of Chris. When I’ve explicitly told you not to do that. Shannon may have left but she is still his mother.”_

_“That’s not what we meant,” Helena tried to placate. Eddie’s mother moved to push herself slowly between the two headbutting rams. One hand gentle on each of their chests._

_“Then what_ **_did_ ** _you mean, mom?” Eddie’s mouth twitched, biting the tender flesh of his right cheek between his molars. His nostrils were flaring beyond his control. “Did you mean that I was the one that wasn’t there for Chris? It's not like you haven’t been implying that for a while now either.”_

_Eddie’s mom reared back as if struck. If Eddie were feeling particularly unkind, he might have said it was one of her better performances. That look of wounded innocence. Like she hadn’t been twisting that particular dagger in his psyche every time he did something she disagreed with when it came to Christopher._

_“Edmundo,” Ramon rebuked him. Voice rougher than it had been before. “¡Pida disculpas a tu mamá!” 8 _

_“I’m not going to apologize!” Eddie turned to close the U-Haul door, walking away from them both. Hoping Chris was still too enraptured in his I-Pad to take notice. Eddie locked the trailer up with a harsh click. “When, somehow, neither of you_ **_ever_ ** _have anything to apologize for.”_

_When he collected himself and turned back, it was to the sight of his parents standing before him in a unified front. Eddie’s mom was standing with her back pressed to her husband’s chest. Hands clasped in front of her sternum. In a black dress with rose patterns, she looked almost saintly. Eddie’s dad was holding her gently, hands soft on her shoulders. Chin resting on top of his mother’s head and staring at Eddie with hard, brown eyes framed by thick glasses._

_Despite all their faults, they were always on the same side. Too bad it always seemed like they were united against Eddie._

_Speaking to his father, chest moving in great heaps of breath, “Especially when you’re the one who drove me to the Recruitment Center after Shannon gave birth. No heads up, no conversation or discussion. Just told me to ‘be a man’ and ‘step up for my family.”_

_That landed between them like a live grenade._

_“So I’m sorry that you disagree with what I am doing to step up for my family. But this is the choice I am making for myself_ _and_ _for Chris,” Eddie’s voice broke on the name of his son. “I don’t need your approval. I just want your support.”_

_“You know we would be happy to keep him until you’re done with the academy,” Helena extended a hand out as if in supplication. Eddie refused to grasp it. He wished it was a gesture meant to comfort him, but he suspected she was approaching him more like she was trying to gentle a startled horse._

_“That’s not what I meant, mother,” Eddie fought back the tears. Refused to give them that little victory. It would serve as proof to them that they were right._

_“Anyway, I wouldn’t trust you two to put him on the plane when the time came,” Eddie continued on with a frog in his throat. The look of contrition flashed across Ramon’s face, there and gone again as fast as lightning._

_The silence between them then was louder than any grenade could have been._

_Eddie turned and walked away, ignoring the sound of his mother’s quiet sniffles and the hushed reassurances of his father. Eddie wondered if he felt bitter that the only time Ramon ever showed any gentleness was for his mother, sisters, and son._

_It was all dried up when it came to Eddie._

_Eddie kept walking around the U-Haul until he reached the rear passenger door of his truck. Eddie scanned Chris through the window with careful eyes, noting how Chris was hunched over his iPad enraptured by something flashing on the screen. A sigh of release escaped his lips._

_Eddie opened the car door and called Chris’s attention. “Hey, mijo. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”_

_“Noooooooo, dad.” Eddie loved Chris’s slow drawl. How the little boy could infuse so much sass into so few words. Top teeth bunny-like as they poked out of smiling lips, his son shone so brightly. “I already went.”_

_“Okay, superman,” Eddie reached into the car to run one hand along the smoothed down curls. They were feather soft, more like Shannon’s texture than his own. “You say goodbye to grandma and grandpa, while I go drain the snake. Okay?”_

_“You got it,” Chris laughed around the words. Potty humor was pretty much the height of humor for the young boy. Eddie was happy to indulge, hoarding those laughs like a dragon hoarded gold._

_The anger drained from him at the sight of his son’s honest delight. It was a palliative. A cure all for Eddie’s soul. Only when he was cleansed by it, did Eddie turn around to look at his parents._

_“You have until I get back to say goodbye,” Eddie’s voice was hoarse with all the words still left unsaid. He walked towards the house and didn’t look back._

_“Eddie,” he thought he heard. Though it was said so softly he felt he might have imagined. Couldn’t discern if the phantom noise was the soft lilt of his mother or the quiet strength of his father. It didn’t matter either way._

_He needed to focus on the journey ahead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> 1\. Why are you calling me?  
> 2\. You don’t have time to talk?  
> 3\. My intuition told me I should call you.  
> 4\. Remember your cousin Rosalina?  
> 5\. The daughter of Uncle Felipe?  
> 6\. Your mother was full of hate for your grandfather when she was pregnant with you.  
> 7\. It is the reason you are the way you are, Eddito. Calm, sensitive, sensible; a man of action more than words  
> 8\. Apologize to your mother!


	3. BAD INTENTIONS?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie joins the 1-1-8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, apologies for the delay! Jan is a tough month, anniversary of a loss and also my birthday. But, hopefully, I will be back to a weekly (or bi-weekly depending on my schedule) post on Sundays from here on out!

Eddie was sweating like a polar bear in the Sahara Desert. The LA weather was determined to wreck the firefighter trainee, constant low-level humidity clinging to Eddie like a moist blanket. Even though the weather was milder than El Paso, at least sweat did the proper thing back in Texas heat. It evaporated. Eddie would need another shower or two before he no longer felt like a giant, salty, nasty mess.

It was the end of the first day of their end of program exams. Eddie had been up since 5am, on very little sleep having been unable to quiet his restless mind the night before. Instead of trying to ease into the day, he ran into it with a reckless abandon.

He had aced the first-aid mock exam first thing in the morning. If asked, Eddie would be unable to tell you the content of the exam, he was so deeply in auto-pilot.

Then came the dummy rescue from the simulated burning building in the afternoon. Eddie's thighs burned sharply, and his lower back twinged just a bit. _Lift with your legs_ _, Diaz!_ The sound of his old drill instructor echoed in his brain ever time his spine reminded him of the importance of proper form.

Finally, they were ending the day on a physical fitness test. Eddie was certain the LAFD instructors had taken lessons directly from the Marquis de Sade, with how gleeful they were in calling out times and counts and insults so sharp the cracked like whips across the field. 

Eddie was in the plank position, focusing on the slow inhale and exhale of air in his body. Eddie had tried to count time with his breaths. Inhaling and exhaling on beat. But he had lost count somewhere at the one minute mark when his abs had mutinied, his lower back deciding to join the charge. _Just focus on your breaths_ , Eddie repeated to himself over and over, trying to ignore his exhaustion and make it to the two-minute minimum goal time that felt like an impossibly long lifetime away.

Eddie wiggled uncomfortably on his forearms, sweat gathering there and making his stance that much more difficult on his already taxed body. Eddie ignored the trembling of his muscles in his lower back, and wiggled himself into proper alignment. 

Breathe in, hold, breathe out.

“Time,” bellowed out Captain Thomas, the man in charge of LAFD Academy. Even the normally stoic and hard-ass man was misty with sweat in the uncharacteristically warm mid September evening. Though, his face was still bland and unflinching in his stiff resting position at the front of the group. The Captains eyes were scalpel sharp as they analyzed the 30 remaining trainees of the original 45 trainees. The fact that the Captain's lips did not downturn into a sour purse of lips, Eddie was 75% certain the Captain was pleased by the recent cohort.

Eddie’s legs buckled underneath him at the call, knees giving out until Eddie was practically in Child’s Pose. (Eddie only knew what Child’s Pose was because his Tia Josephina had given him some of her yoga DVD’s saying, “For relaxation. _Has estado muy estresado_ 1.” Eddie tried it once and never did it again.) 

Forcing air into and out of his lungs in a few great puffs, Eddie slowly worked his way up to his feet until he was standing at parade rest. One by one, his cohort followed suit, until they were a wall of sweaty, red-faced, blue-suited messes.

“You all are dismissed for the day, Firefighter Trainees.” The nod from Captain Thomas would have been considered curt if it were anyone else. Eddie bumped that up to 95% certain the man was pleased by the cohort. Considering the man’s normal acerbic and bombastic heckling, the nod was practically a shout of pride. Eddie let the last of the tension leach from his shoulders and dreamed of his next shower and meal. “Go get some rest. Tomorrow is a long day of paper exams.”

His classmates gave sloppy salutes and broke off to the locker rooms to change. Eddie, like usual, planned to skip past that and head to his truck and make his way home. He had to pick up Christopher from his Abuela.

School had been in session in LA for only three weeks, and Eddie had already run through as many after-school babysitters and caretakers. 

The whole summer had been characterized by one small fire after another. Starting with the difficulty in finding an affordable house to rent (the first three wouldn’t take him despite his savings while he was on a trainee’s salary). As much as he would have loved to live near or by his Abuela, he needed to live in LA proper within 6 months of hire. Ultimately, he had found a deal for a house in Northridge. The owner was the elderly Mrs. Norris who had slowly transformed her home to accommodate her in her old age, that it was ready-made ADA compliant. One flash of Christopher's dimples, and the Diaz boys had a place to rent for relatively cheap while Mrs. Norris flew to retire in Florida with her daughter.

Of course, securing a decent house could not have been Eddie’s only obstacle. Oh no, the universe wasn’t that kind. The local school was a shit-show from moment one of Christopher's enrollment. Eddie’s blood raced thinking of all the meetings, examinations, doctors visits, and shouting matches he had got into over the course of the summer. Eddie promised himself that if he ever was in a position to save their first LAUSD Case Manager from a burning building he would let her go up in flames. Ultimately, Eddie managed to get Christopher enrolled in school somewhat close to their house and with the accommodations he needed. Unfortunately, however, the school was in South LA.

Between his Abuela in East LA, Christopher's School in South LA, the Academy in San Pedro, and their home in Northwood, Eddie basically did a loop around LA almost every day. 

Eddie’s poor tires had seen better days.

Suffice it to say, Eddie’s summer and daily commuting meant that he had absolutely no time to go out with any of his fellow trainees. He barely ever had time to do more than exchange pleasantries in the locker rooms, and rarely stayed to shower to or even change in order to hit the road. The almost middle aged man had gotten disgustingly used to feeling a day's worth of sweat dry on his skin and sitting with it for hours on end.

Suffice it to say, Eddie's primary social circle consisted of his (now) seven year old son, his 84 year old grandmother, and his 60 year old aunt. Very occasionally, he saw his cousins at family parties. Not that Eddie minded. Much.

Eddie gathered himself after his body began to cooperate with him once more, wiped off the sweat on his forehead with his arm sleeve, and turned to the direction of his truck. He had moved his equipment back into the back seat during the lunch break, so he could head home immediately when the tests were concluded for the day. Glancing at his watch, he was happy to see that it was only 4:30pm. The original agenda had said the tests could last as late as 6pm.

“Diaz, come here a second,” Thomas called out at a slightly less boisterous volume now that most of the trainees had cleared out.

Eddie’s eyebrows flicked up and down for a second in confusion, before he schooled them into submission and followed the command. Thankfully, Eddie was already fairly close to the front of the training area and made it to Thomas in a few short strides.

Standing next to the average-heighted Thomas, was a much taller man. Eddie evaluated the newcomer standing with Thomas with a critical eye, looking him up and down for a hint to the purpose of the meeting. The man’s uniform read “Cpt. Nash” and his smile was the polar opposite of Thomas’ dour face. Looking at the crows feet at the corner of the eyes, and peppering of grey in a relatively thick head of hair, Eddie would clock the man in his early 50s. Despite the age assessment, the man carried a hefty set of muscle. Eddie's was certain his sister's would swoon over the man with exclamations of 'silver fox.' Eddie banished the thought as quickly as it came.

“Captain Thomas,” Eddie acknowledged his trainer. Eddie had to fight instinct to jerk his right arm into a proper salute. Instead he looked Nash in the eyes and nodded a greeting. "Sir."

“Captain Robert Nash from Station 118,” Thomas jutted his chin to indicate the stranger in the mix. “Meet Trainee Edmundo Diaz.”

At hearing his name, the silver fox jutted out a hand for a handshake. Eddie reached for it reluctantly. The voice that came out had the soft round vowels that sounded faintly midwestern to Eddie, “You can call me Bobby.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Eddie replied instantaneously. The response elicited a warm chuckle from the man whose hand Eddie was still shaking.

Captain Nash continued chuckling as he released Eddie’s grip. Nash turned to his bald peer to say, “I see what you mean.”

Eddie's eyebrows jerked down into momentary confusion, before evening out once more. Eddie decided to keep his mouth shut and see how this played out.

“You said you were looking for a cool-head,” Thomas smirked in self-satisfaction. Well, Eddie assumed it was self-satisfaction. A smirk was a common feature on Captain Thomas's face. 

“Excellent,” Bobby jutted out a gentle elbow into the shoulder of his fellow captain. “Steaks or Thai for the next Captain’s poker night?”

“Wood fire pizza and I’ll bring the Mexican Coke you like,” Thomas said, jabbing Nash back with much more force.

“It’s a deal,” Bobby acknowledged. Returning his attention back to the thoroughly confused Eddie. Eddie forced his eyes not to squint in suspicion. “So Diaz, Thomas let me know about your circumstances. We had worked out something that we thought could benefit everyone. If you agree, that is.”

“Umm …” Eddie looked back and forth between his academy trainer for the last eighteen weeks and the new captain. “No offense, sir, but what exactly is going on?”

Both Captains chuckled in slight embarrassment.

“I’ll field this one,” Captain Thomas said. “As you know an unofficial part of my job is helping captains coordinate their selections of probationary firefighters for their 3-month rotations. I reached out to Captain Nash about taking you on, after a couple of other feelers fell through.”

A sinking feeling had filled Eddie’s gut. Eddie hadn’t read the fine print on the LAFD, and didn’t realize he wouldn't be a full-fledged firefighter until after a year of probationary status. A probationary status that came with 3-month rotations at 4 different stations across the city.

Eddie had gone to Captain Thomas early on to ask if there was any way he could be placed with Valley Bureau units close to his home. The Summer when Christopher didn't have school was tough yet manageable, but the three weeks Christopher had been in school had stretched Eddie thinner than too little butter on too much bread. Getting a placement that wouldn’t automatically shaft him with the worst and most changeable shift schedule, would be another plus. 

Eddie was sure they could survive a year of terrible shifts, terrible commutes, and the unpredictability of a probationary firefighter's schedule. Yet, Eddie wanted better for Christopher than just survival. Wanted better for himself, if he were honest. 

He wanted them to thrive.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ was the response Eddie received. Eddie tried not to hope as waited in silence, too anxious of appearing like a whiner or burden to follow-up since the initial request to Captain Thomas.

Not hearing anything thus far, Eddie had resigned himself to keeping his head down and making it work. Like he always did.

“Station 118 is a South Bureau station,” Eddie said. The complete opposite side of town from him right now.

“I tried Diaz,” Thomas nodded his head in apology. “Battalions 10, 15, and 17 have the fewest openings out of all of them.”

“Of course, sir. I appreciate that. I’ll go where I’m told and make it work,” Eddie subconsciously moved back into parade rest. Clenching his fists in his hands, nails biting into the already tender skin of his palms.

“Of course, I would never dream of flouting the anti-nepotism rules,” Thomas nodded in appreciation at Eddie’s stoic acceptance. “Doesn’t mean I couldn’t mention a certain recruit and his situation to my good friend here, Captain Nash. What he does after that is his business.”

Though Thomas didn’t say it, he had favorites from almost every cohort he trained. Henrietta Wilson was one of his, and her recommendation of Captain Nash went a long way in securing Thomas’s trust. Plus, the 118 had real success with … non-traditional recruits, as some Captains might call them. (Though Thomas personally preferred _underdog_.) 

_Fuck_ , Eddie thought in the quiet of his mind. Some of the panic must have flashed across his face, because Bobby Nash instantly placed a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, son,” Bobby stated calmly. “Nothing untoward. Just something that could work for all of us.”

“I’ll leave the two of you to talk. I have a couple more trainee’s I need to follow up with,” Thomas nodded and departed for the locker rooms without waiting for a response. For a man of average height, he took steps like he was several feet taller.

When Thomas was no longer within listening range, Eddie let Bobby know he was ready, “I’m listening, sir.” 

“Call me Bobby, son,” Bobby rebuked Eddie with a smile and one of those strong shoulder pats that were endemic to straight white men of a certain age. The aura of calm the man emanated went a long way in loosening the stiff line of Eddie’s spine.

“Captain Bobby, then,” Eddie nodded, flashed a quick there-and-gone-again teasing smile at the Captain.

“I’ll get you there,” Bobby replied with the aplomb of a man well-used to smart-mouths and teasing quips.

Eddie wiped off another line of sweat running down his brow onto his shoulder. Taking a breath and focusing on the almost-stranger before him.

“While things won’t be able to work out in the Valley Bureau, the South Bureau is constantly short-staffed. Even with trainee’s on rotation with us, we have trouble keeping them when positions open up in other stations.” Bobby Nash delivered these lines like he was giving a presentation to a room full of executives. He probably had at some point. 

Eddie nodded, still uncertain where the conversation was going. 

“Since your biggest concern is stability, I reached out to HR the moment Thomas let me know you could be a good one for my team. If you’re willing to give it a shot, you can do your entire probationary year with us. Since I handle the station’s scheduling, I can’t promise you a perfect schedule but I can promise to take your needs into account. There will be a job for you lined up too, once you’re no longer a probie.” 

Eddie was shocked that the man could deliver that kind news with such level words and unconcerned eyes. Eddie was floored. This was everything he had been hoping for, practically gift-wrapped and presented to him on a silver platter.

The look of happy shock on Eddie’s face gave way to immediate suspicion, “What’s the catch?”

“I need someone with trauma experience desperately,” Bobby explained. Despite the sticky early evening heat, the man didn’t look like a single feather had been ruffled out of place. Eddie looked at him in envy. “We've been constantly understaffed since a lot of our old guard left for captain-track promotions at different stations."

“But that’s not the only reason is there?” Eddie maybe needed to work on his suspicious personality. He couldn’t seem to help himself though.

Handouts had, in his experience, come with trojan surprises.

“The world’s only getting crazier, and Thomas said you were a grounding presence for your peers. That’s why I want you on my team.” For the first time, Bobby Nash’s face turned from pleasant to sharp and serious. Blue eyes piercing Eddie into place, forcing Eddie’s spine stiffer and straighter in response to the gravity and authority the other was emanating. “My personal team has a lot of strong personalities. One in particular that comes to mind that could use some reigning in from their impulsive side.”

“This isn’t a diversity hire thing? Or a veteran photo op thing?” Eddie asked, mouth running away from him. Eddie would blame it on the low-blood sugar. That didn’t mean Eddie was wrong, though. It wouldn't be the first time. Drill Instructors from Basic liked referring to Eddie as ‘spicy’ or mentioning that Eddie added ‘flavor’ to the training cohort.

“Nope, definitely not that,” Bobby brought up his hands in the universal sign of ‘I’m unarmed and harmless.’ “If it was that kind of thing, I wouldn’t need you. My station already has amazing Black, Asian and LGBTQ firefighters. This isn’t Pokémon. I’m not trying to collect them all.”

“You know what Pokémon are?” Eddie asked dubiously. Silently cursing himself, and forced his mouth back to his preferred shut position. 

“My girlfriend’s son,” Bobby added, face having shifted back from the stern seriousness to jovial neutrality.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbled out in acknowledgement. Less about the Pokémon comment and more about the rest of it.

“No hard feelings, Diaz.” Reaching into one of his uniform pockets he pulled out a business card. Passing it to Eddie calmly, “Talk to Thomas if you have any doubts.”

“You can call me Eddie,” the trainee’s mouth moved again without Eddie’s prompting. Perhaps Bobby Nash had some superpower of forcing people to talk. _Yeah, that was definitely it_.

“Only if you call me Bobby,” Captain Nash teased the trainee.

“Thanks Bobby,” Eddie said, throwing the older man a bone. Bobby reacted only by reaching out with his right hand for another handshake. Bobby grasped Eddie’s hand in a tight grip, pumping it up and down in excitement, and patted Eddie once more on the shoulder with his other hand.

“Great! You start on the 23rd!” Bobby exclaimed as if Eddie had already accepted the proposal. Eddie didn’t rush to refuse, already half decided that he would accept the proposal. Even if it wasn’t an ideal station, the promise of not needing to move and being at a station that would take his scheduling needs into consideration was too much of a good thing to pass up.

“Do you have any food allergies?” Bobby went on, completely ignoring the poleaxed expression on the trainee’s face.

 _What am I getting myself into?_ Eddie thought with some mix of uncertainty and excitement.

\--

Panic built in his throat the moment Eddie entered the 118. Eddie had been shooting to get to the station half an hour before his scheduled start time, to make a good impression, but fighting traffic after dropping Christopher off at school meant he arrived only fifteen minutes early. Captain Nash was nowhere to be found, and Eddie spent the entire time before his shift officially started looking for the shift lieutenant he was starting to suspect didn't exist. 

Finally, some kind-eyed man who looked like a reformed lumberjack pointed him to the locker room where his new kit was already waiting for him. Someone who knew Eddie well might have recognized the man was nervous, as he fumbled out an awkward "thank you" to the man. Eddie was absolutely certain the other firefighter thought Eddie was curt and unfriendly. Eddie couldn't help his 'resting douche face', as Anita liked to call it.

Eddie’s skin itched from all the eyes focused on him, either watching him out of the corner of their eyes or unashamedly surveilling him head-on. Sharks circling around the smell of fresh probie in the water. The former-trainee-now-probationary-firefighter studiously _did not_ avoid eye contact. Eddie gave small, tight nods to everyone who looked in his direction. 

Eddie, from his experience in the Army, was braced for the light hazing and scrutinizing gazes. The more unflappable he seemed now, the less shit they would give him when they started the hazing. The sweat on his palms belied the stoic front.

Shifting his eyes about the lay of the land every few moments, hoping for a glimpse of Captain Nash. Eddie was surprised that Nash was serious about assigning Eddie to the same truck as the Station Captain. Which meant that Eddie had to be 110% at all times now. Eddie's wiped his hands against his pants and set himself to finding and changing into his new gear.

While in the middle of changing in the locker room, Eddie finally spied the erstwhile Captain from half the station away. Within moments of entering the station, three firefighters as different as they come, gravitated to each other and around the Captain like some kind of honor guard.

Eddie evaluated them all from the anonymity of the distance. Eddie had heard about Paramedic Wilson from Captain Thomas. Her stance was casual, her look clean and polished. Eddie noted how she was the first person Captain Nash approached. The confident way she seemed to speak to the Captain spoke of familiarity and absolute comfort in her skin and her environment. Eddie made a note to get her on his side as soon as possible, if he had any hope of surviving this experience.

Eddie tracked the path of the mountain of muscle and sun-kissed skin that approached Wilson and Nash, phone held up and words lost to Eddie from a distance. Eddie had known a lot of guys exactly like this one. Tall, broad and buff. Though the Viking of a man wasn’t just gym-bunny physique. There was real muscle there, used to real labor. Blond haired, blue eyed, and with a swagger that said the man knew exactly how hot he was. Despite that, the smile and way the blond circled around his friends was more like a puppy growing into its paws. Still, Eddie’s spine stiffened, and filed him away as a threat until more information could be determined.

The final person to approach was a medium-short, buff Asian man that Eddie had heard someone call 'Chim' when he first entered the station. The man had the kind of smirk on his face that looked like it was a permanent fixture on his middle-aged face. Eyes immediately danced in mirth, and the man had the group laughing within moments of arrival. Eddie sensed Han would be the easiest nut to crack of the bunch, as long as Eddie could survive his quick tongue.

The big sister, the baby boy, and the sarcastic middle child. All circling around the parental figure. If it was jockeying for approval, constant one-upmanship, or good-natured camaraderie, Eddie was going to keep his opinion to himself until he had more to work with.

The thing about packs like these was that they were extremely territorial.

Eddie just hoped he wasn’t about to be consumed by the wolves.

\--

Buck’s eyes bore through Eddie’s skull the entire of Eddie's first ride on the firetruck. They were on the way to an accident at a mechanic shop, where they encountered a man skewered on an air pump and puffed up like the Go-Puff Marshmallow Man. 

Throughout the entire ordeal, not once did Buck's blue eyes relent in their laser sharpness aimed at Eddie. 

“That was a good call,” Eddie received from Captain Nash. Nods and other subtle recognition from the rest of the truck.

“Yeah. Good call,” Eddie received from Buckley. The words scraped against the blond's teeth like rocks, Eddie could tell. Despite how begrudging they were, Eddie appreciated the acknowledgement nevertheless. 

Eddie was just thoroughly confused how it hadn’t even been a full shift and he had already made enemies. From experience, it took most people years to come to loathe Eddie. Such that, the instantaneous hate was blond firefighter.

Eddie's initial evaluation of the jock had pegged him more golden-retriever than asshole high-school quarterback. Any good cheer that Buck had walking into the station that morning had evaporated like piss on a hot sidewalk. 

On the ride back to the station, Buck’s baby blues downgraded from death-star to plasma blasters levels of intensity. Still, Eddie felt like they were peeling back the flesh of Eddie's face with scalpel like precision.

\--

“Hey, Han! What up a second, will you?” Eddie called to the shorter man, as they both had showered and were on their way out to their vehicles after Eddie’s first shift. Thankfully, the rest of the day had passed easily enough with Eddie stuck on inventory duty.

Typical probie stuff from Eddie’s experience.

“Call me Chimney,” the other man said with a face that looked like it was constantly laughing. Switching back and forth easily from the kind of face that was laughing _with you_ to the kind of face that was laughing _at you_. 

“Chim,” Eddie nodded in acknowledgement. Eddie didn’t let his face of calm seriousness falter. Nash had mentioned needing a calming influence on the team, and damn him if Eddie wasn’t trying to deliver that impression.

Hard.

“What can I do you for, Eddie?” Chim prompted Eddie, as they began to walk towards their respective vehicles.

“So … Buckley.” Eddie evaluated Chim from the side of his eye, trying to evaluate the expression.

“Yeah,” Chim drowned out, a look of scrunched contrition flashing across his face. “So you noticed that, huh? I swear he’s normally a giant puppy. An oversexed giant puppy but still a puppy.”

“Okay, so the cujo impression is just for me then.” Eddie bit the inside of his cheek, following Chim to the shorter man’s car. “Any idea why?” 

Chim popped open the trunk of his new dark green Subaru Outback (a car he had gotten specifically for its safety rating), and contemplated Eddie’s question. When he closed the trunk, the Asian man turned to his counterpart and evaluated him shrewdly.

“You already tried Hen and the Captain and they wouldn’t tell you anything, huh?” Chim rested on hip on the side of his truck, and crossed his muscular arms. 

Eddie rubbed a rough palm against the side of his neck in discomfort. “Didn’t think I was that obvious.”

“Don’t worry about it, Hen and Bobby are super protective,” Chim waved him off. “You’d have an easier time of cracking Fort Knox than prying something out of those two.”

“Everybody has nothing but good things to say about Buckley,” Eddie brought his own arms, and folded them across his chest. Unconsciously mimicking the stance of the older man. “When he's not pulling stupid stunts that is. Kinda making it tough to see that at the moment.”

“Well, it's only been a day,” scratching along the grey stubble on his chin, Chim contemplated the sight of Eddie Diaz. Face even and handsome, hair still somehow modelesque despite being fresh from a shower.

Body and words were far too stiff to be as calm as he was pretending. Do not let it be said that Chim wasn't as shrewd as Hen in his own right. There was a reason the pair were best friends.

“I figure it’s one of three things,” Chim decided to throw Eddie a bone. Despite their impression of two rams bucking heads against each other (pun intended in the quiet of Chim’s own mind), Diaz and Buckley were awfully similar in a lot of ways.

Eddie nodded and waited in silence for a response.

“The first and most obvious one is his girlfriend," Chim's face twisted into a slight scowl. "Or should I say, ex-girlfriend. Abbie was the first serious relationship Buck’s ever had. It really tore him up when she left. Don’t think he’s fully come to grips that it’s actually over.”

Something thick and acidic sloshes in Eddie’s gut. He wasn’t quite expecting this level of honesty.

“The second is probably a part of it, too. Buck was much younger and much greener than you when he started here,” Chim mused, rolling the words around his tongue like chewing gum. If the current Buck was 2.0, and Buck before Abby was Buck 1.0 … Then the Buck 0.0 that Chim first met was much, much more of a walking disaster. “It took years before Buck got as comfortable with us as he is now, and even longer to earn Bobby’s trust. You’re the newest on board and you skipped right past that. Bound to be some jealousy there.”

That made a shocking amount of sense to Eddie. Eddie nodded, he knew how to deal with situations like that. 

Chim lapsed into silence, hesitating for the first time thus far. Eddie prompted him with heavy dread weighing in his belly, “What’s the third thing?”

The cocksure grin of Chim had clear _laughing-at-you_ energy, the shorter man bringing up a hand and patting Eddie firmly on the side of the arm.

“He’s pulling your pigtails,” Chim said and immediately devolved into some self-satisfied chuckles. Before Eddie had a chance to inquire further, Chim turned around and left to enter his car.

“Wait, what?” Eddie called out to Chim’s back.

Chim’s chuckles grew into outright laughter.

“Are you being serious?” Eddie asked, eyes narrowed and suspicious that he was being trolled. The only response he got was the slamming of Chim’s driver’s side door and the sound of his Outback being turned on.

Eddie would ask again the next day.

There’s no way Chim could be serious on the last front.

\--

Eddie’s bomb squad vest was heavy around his shoulders, pinching into his rib cage where it sat on him like an inflexible sandbag. The weight of it was uncomfortably familiar. A tickle of memories danced at the back of Eddie’s skull and he forced them out of his head. There was Charlie, a retiree in the back of an ambulance truck, losing blood with a live grenade lodged in his thigh dangerously close to bleeding out. Eddie didn’t have time for memories.

From the moment Buck entered the truck a few heartbeats before Eddie did, something had shifted. An electric sizzle on Eddie’s senses.

“Nobody’s leaving this life tonight,” Buck said. The red of his birthmark looked less like a bruise and more like a tattoo in the light of the firetruck. A red kiss against his left eyebrow, face focused and serious. Matched by lips worried red by anxious teeth.

“Start the drip.” Before the words even left Eddie’s mouth, Buck’s hands were moving of their own accord. 

Eddie prompted Charlie to talk, to evaluate how quickly the drug would move through his system. Eddie didn’t hear the words as he moved around the truck, coordinating the gauze and the extraction tool. 

Buck’s eyes moved from Charlie’s as the victim fell into unconsciousness, instinctively seeking the walnut brown warmth of Eddie’s eyes.

“You ready?” Eddie’s voice was level, even as Buck’s hands were already reaching for the block-soaked dressing covering the wound as if he was reading Eddie's mind.

“Yeah,” Buck’s voice was softer, a hint of crack in it. Less confident, but braver for it.

Eddie was moving on auto-pilot. Slipping into the quiet space in the center of his head, a place he had only discovered in the chaos of the army and battle field.

Time slushed around them in uneven spurts, adrenaline and focus meant that the event was remembered more clearly in flashes than in a linear progression.

The scent of coppery blood, the squelch of flesh as the round was finally removed from the wound, the tinny click from placing the round into the bomb box. The sound of placing the box on the ambulance bench, as they rushed Charlie’s stretcher out of the truck and into the hospital for emergency surgery.

There were certain flashes though, that also lingered with Eddie.

The “you got this” whispered in reassurance, the way Buck’s lips shaped encouragements like “come on” and “yeah” but never vocalized them for fear of breaking Eddie’s concentration. The soft puff of air exhaled when the shell was free from bloody flesh. The way the breath caught in both their lungs as Eddie lowered the round into the box as the anxiety crescendoed.

The relieved sighs and the shape of Buck’s smile when they realized they had succeeded.

“You can have my back any day,” Eddie remembered saying. The adrenaline was fading lazy and distant in his blood, the hyper-focus receding and the rest of the world filtering in like sandpaper against already sensitive senses.

“Or, you know, you could …” For the first time since Eddie had met him days ago, that boyish, aww-shuck’s charm made its triumphant return on Evan Buckley’s face. Almost teasingly, Buck added, “You could have mine.”

Eddie finally noticed the depth and brightness of the blue in Buck's eyes. The ambulance truck in the background exploded. 

Eddie's breath caught in his chest.

 _Fuck_.

He couldn't tell you if it was the explosion or the look in Buck's eyes that robbed him of breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> 1\. You have been very stressed.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slow build, pseudo character study. I love all the pairings in this show, but Buddie has a special place in my heart.
> 
> The core of this work is this: Not what we see on the show between Buck and Eddie. But the things we see between and around scenes. The interstitial spaces. Leading Eddie from the purgatory of El Paso, to a fulfilling life with everybody's favorite blond white hunk.
> 
> Mostly written from Eddie's POV. As a Latino man myself, I relate to him and his narrative the most, so that's going to be the main driver.
> 
> Other notes to follow.


End file.
